27-09-1964

The Warren Commission Report is released

The 888-page Warren Commission report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is released after a 10-month investigation, concluding that there was no conspiracy in the assassination, either domestic or international, and that Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin, acted alone. The President’s commission, headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, also found that Jack Ruby, the nightclub owner who murdered Oswald on live national television, had no prior contact with Oswald.

According to the report, the bullets that killed President Kennedy and injured Texas Governor John Connally were fired by Oswald in three shots from a rifle pointed out of a sixth floor window in the Texas School Book Depository. Oswald's life, including his visit to the Soviet Union, was described in detail, but the report made no attempt to analyse his motives.

Despite its seemingly firm conclusions, the report failed to silence conspiracy theories surrounding the event, and in 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in a preliminary report that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy" that may have involved multiple shooters and organised crime.

The committee's findings, as with the findings of the Warren Commission, continue to be widely disputed. Famed director Oliver Stone highlighted several of the shortcomings of the Warren Report in his highly controversial and disputed film ‘JFK’ (1991) starring Kevin Costner and Gary Oldman.